


Clockwork Heart

by regalgeek



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017), The Worst Witch - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant as of season 3 finale, Concerningly so, F/F, Hecate Hardbroom is repressed, Hints of Hicsqueak, rather angsty with a happy ending, tw:confinement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 02:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18240938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regalgeek/pseuds/regalgeek
Summary: Her heart is encased in iron, squeezed tight in her steely grasp and forced to beat to the rhythm she wants it to in a desperate attempt to exercise control over it. But still it remains traitorous, refuses to follow the rules she’s set.Or: Hecate's relationship with rules.





	Clockwork Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings regarding Hecate, her repression, and her almost obsessive devotion to the rules. This was my attempt at getting those feelings out.  
> It wasn't meant to be even remotely hicsqueak, but hicsqueak happened. Oops?  
> Either way, not exactly a happy story, but I was trying to remain canon compliant, which does not leave a lot of room for happiness.  
> Well, before I start to ramble. A lot. I'm going to leave ya'll to the story!

Rules are there for many, very good, reasons. They give order to the chaos, they promote safety, they set a standard for everyone. Hecate Hardbroom likes rules. Likes to follow the rules, and make sure that they are enforced to the very letter. 

She saw firsthand what happened when the rules were broken, and would never again make such a selfish and foolish mistake.

She quickly found that the rules already put in place were not enough to calm the confusion inside of her. Her heart still found itself a disordered mess, her feelings still were everywhere, encouraging her to do what she shouldn’t, encouraging her to try and be more than what she had vowed to become-a perfect disciple of the witch’s code.

Treacherous things, feelings.

An unordered world holds untold dangers. The way her heart flutters about everytime Pippa smiless, the temptation to break the rules because Pippa wants her to, the startling willingness to throw away any code for the mere opportunity to make Pippa happy, all of it dangerous to the walls she was building and the constraints she placed on her heart.

And without those walls and bindings, she was dangerous. She needed them to keep others safe, to keep herself safe. The only thing she could do was break away from Pippa (her Pipsqueak). In order to ensure the safety of her dearest friend. 

_The rules are there for your protection._

Seeing Pippa’s heart shatter, Hecate adds another ingredient to the walls around her heart. The mortar to keep the bricks built of rules and regulations, from shifting and swaying. A paste of self-loathing, reinforced every time she meets Pippa’s eyes, every time Pippa asks “why” and she can not tell her. 

She builds the walls ever higher, until even she could no longer reach the top, reinforces them with the strongest of material. Finally, it is safe for her to carve the rules into the stone. Permanently in place, unbreakable, unyielding, the dictates she will follow, will never sway from, are seared into the stone by her own hand. It is better this way, better for her to be fettered by vows and codes, bound by laws and statutes, and chained by rules and regulations. 

Without them, Hecate is a dangerous creature, chaos without order. One need only look at Indigo Moon and what happened to her when Hecate refused to be bound by Witch’s Code. The innocent girl forever encased in stone as a result of the mistakes of a dangerous, chaotic, little girl.

_The rules are there for your protection._

On her graduation day, they offer to remove the binding spell that keeps her at the school. The spell which had one punished her, but now gave her comfort. She refuses the offer. It is better this way. On the grounds she has stability, familiarity. An exact knowledge of the best ways to order herself. The world is chaotic and unordered, and Hecate takes comfort in the knowledge that, even if the constraints she has built for herself fail to keep her well-controlled, the danger that she offers will remain localized.

The unknown has too many variables for her to carefully construct a rule for every situation.

Hecate trains under her former potions teacher and gains credits through correspondence courses. Studying new locations and working on projects through mail, she feels the occasional desire for something more, something new, an occasional wistfulness for the outside world, an occasional curiosity for what lies beyond the world available to her. She ruthlessly suppresses such desires, buries them beneath hours of research, whispered recitations of the witch’s code, its words seared permanently into her mind through innumerable painstaking hours of memorization. 

The final year of her correspondence courses, the headmistress’s daughter takes the position of deputy headmistress, no doubt preparing to take over the school. Hecate had seen her on occasion, of course, as a frequent visitor to the school but had gone out of her way to avoid her. There had been nothing wrong with her, the woman seemed, from a distance, kind and capable. But Hecate had learned how to recognize those rare individual who were capable of seeing beyond the walls she had built with such precision and care. Such people should be avoided, an option no longer available to her.

Those who realized what she had done always had a way of getting past her defenses, and Hecate still could not trust her traitorous heart to do as it was told. 

Their friendship develops slowly, but develop it does, despite Hecate’s attempts to the contrary. And the next year, when she takes over as potions teacher, the old one having trained her for this exact purpose in anticipation of her retirement, the congratulations from Ada somehow feel more special than all of the others. Her heart is a defective organ, unwilling to obey, but no less powerful despite its deficiencies. And so, for the sake of the structures she has built around herself, Hecate has no choice but to make an exception, to add an amendment to her rules. 

She’s happy for the fact that she hadn’t seen Pippa in years, however much she misses her. To see the woman she thinks about even now, on those rare occasions she isn’t occupying herself, would be to risk an unacceptable breach of her walls. And that would represent the shattering of the laws she had set for herself.

_The rules are there for your protection._

Despite the fact that Ada had penetrated her self-imposed isolation, had fiddled with the fetters Hecate had bound herself with and adjusted them so they would not cut quite so deeply into her skin, Hecate will not, can not, allow herself to relinquish any more control. Though Ada finds herself privy to those rare moments where repressed emotions bubble up and threaten to spill out of her, Hecate carefully forces her heart into line with a new set of rules, tailored to the changed circumstances.

It is easier to allow someone in with rules to guide her.

The day Ada becomes headmistress, she calls Hecate to her office, anger, an emotion which Ada only very rarely indulges in, evident in the way she holds herself. She has discovered, then, that not every cord which Hecate has bound herself in is laid only in her mind, and that she is not everpresent at the school purely of her own doing. The resultant fight, sparked when Ada attempts to remove the spell from her despite Hecate’s protests, lasts for hours. In the aftermath, there are weeks of tense silence between the pair, watched on the sidelines by others without interference. They reconcile only when Hecate extracts a promise from Ada to remove the spell only with her permission. 

Teaching had never been in the plans set for the life of Joy Hecate Hardbroom, but Hecate quickly finds herself deciding to never change her career path. She enjoys sharing her knowledge of potions with students, and takes pride in her job instilling order and discipline in her pupils, enforcing each and every rule without exception, and handing out harsh punishments for each and every infraction.

There is no enjoyment in the fact that she causes her students no end of frustration, she does not relish in the opportunity to set a detention. Hecate wishes for nothing more than the message to sink in, for those under her care to develop a regard for the rules, a respect for the witch’s code, before it is too late and even the harshest of punishments she sets would begin to look light in comparison. A failure to instill control in those she teaches in something she can not allow.

_The rules are there for your protection._

As Deputy Headmistress, she is merciless, Ada’s influence on their shared decisions the only factor preventing the raising of standards too high. Hecate feigns frustration, accuses Ada of softness, but the both of them know that she agrees. She wants the girls to respect the rules, she wants the girls to excel, she doesn’t want to set goals for them which can never be met. They will be better than her, will not require so many bindings and ties to keep from straying. 

She is glad that her title is only that of deputy headmistress, happy that the final decision is not in the hands of one so dangerous and damaged as her. It is better this way, better with Ada in charge. Hecate knows that she would not do well should their positions be reversed, knows that, with how tight she must grip in order to restrict herself, she has never learned how to loosen. 

The students are chaotic, but it is a predictable sort of chaos, happening with slight variations every year, at almost the exact same time each and every year. The schedules and lesson plans, the stable cycle of life at Cackles, all of it serves to bring a peace to Hecate. There is the occasional push on her walls, the occasion tug on her restraints, an occasional attempt to free her heart from the suffocating grasp she holds it in, but she stubbornly refuses to relinquish her grip. However exhausted she becomes, however much her emotions try to slip free, her hold on her passions remains as tight as iron, never faltering. She can not afford to loosen her restraints any further, can not afford to be anything other than unyielding in the face of the laws she had engraved in her walls by hand when she was still a child.

_The rules are there for your protection._

She loves her students, would die for any one of them from the first time they walk into the school, but she is careful to make sure they do not know just how deep her care for them goes. However hurt she is, at times, by their loathing for her and her strict, almost cruel at times, nature, however much it pains her to know that many of them well and truly hate her, it is better for them to be caught up in their loathing than for them to care about her. Ada and Dimity and even Gwen can be soft, can dry their tears after their harsh potions mistress assigns a far too strict punishment, can soothe their pain. That is not the role for Hecate. If they care about her, truly, then she becomes dangerous to them, a scenario she can not allow.

The respect of her students is the only thing she can hope for.

When Mildred Hubble arrives at the school on selection day, crash lands straight into the lake, Hecate knows that she can not possibly be allowed to stay. She is kind, brave, and wholly out of control. She has no clue what the witch’s code is, much less the rules within, and simply watching her stirs feelings and sentiments within her heart against her will, memories of a girl long-forgotten. Mildred Hubble is a very dangerous girl. When she fails her exams spectacularly, Hecate almost lets out a sigh of relief. 

Then Agatha reveals her plot and Hecate can do nothing to help Ada, can not break the rules of The Witch’s Code, can not risk the release of the dangerous creature inside of her that even now struggles against the chains she has set for it. But Mildred Hubble, in all of her uncontrolled, unknowing, glory, is able to save the day. Is able to save Ada, as free as she is, utterly unfettered by the witch’s code or any other rule. But she pushes down whatever affection the act gains the girl, and focuses on the fact that she is now one of her students, is now a loose cannon threatening to shatter the discipline and order that Hecate meticulously maintains. The rules have no real hold on her, and that is unspeakably dangerous.

_The rules are there for your protection._

At first she tries to expel the girl, tries to get her to leave before she does something to interrupt the academy’s carefully cultivated stability besides simply be clumsy and clueless, and then, when that fails, she watches her carefully, waiting for a situation in which she’ll have to interfere, waiting to hear that someone or something is in danger, and tries to pretend she doesn’t see the resemblance. 

The spelling bee marks a change for her. She sees Pippa again, and puts up a front, tries not to let the other woman, who still haunts her mind, see what she has become. She tries to stay focused on the task at hand, tries to work on anything and everything, but having her there is pressing every button Hecate has, and it is all she can do to try and keep herself together, try to keep her grip on her heart as tight as she possibly can. Her restraints are straining, her chains are breaking, all at once it is all coming undone. Through the entirety of the competition she has to keep reminding herself of the rules and why, no matter how tempting it might be, the rules can not be broken.

_The rules are there for your protection._

She reunites with Pippa, and tries to push just how dangerous this is to the back of her mind, tries to tighten her grip through other means. It would be easier if her heart would simply obey, so much less stressful and confusing if her emotions would agree to settle and stop trying to force themselves out and exert control over her. 

She breaks yet another rule, after Agatha takes over the castle. And then another rule. Her entire code starts to crumble before her and she is almost thankful for her inability to interfere, to further shatter her restraints, inside the portrait. When she is released (the battle won, not with careful restraint and meticulously toeing the line but by Mildred Hubble, as free and unfettered as she was the day she stepped into the academy) she finds it hard to celebrate, instead caught up in a numb feeling that she had thought she wanted.

She failed. That is the only thought that she can focus on, the words taunt and torment her mind. She had grown too soft, had allowed her grip to loosen its hold ever so slightly, and she was unable to save them. She had bent the rules, had yielded ever so slightly, and as a result, they were unsafe. 

The summer is spent isolating herself from everybody, no longer answering Pippa’s mirror calls, shying away from Ada’s concerned questions, staying far away from anything and anyone able to stop the process of strengthening her walls once more. By the time the school year begins, the bars around her heart have been reinforced, so as to prevent even the most blatant of betrayals from impeding her functioning. It is, she reminds herself, as she thinks about Pippa’s smile and Ada’s laugh and how very lonely she is at this moment, necessary. 

_The rules are there for your protection._

The next year is an exercise in losing control, she decides, from the beginning, when the castle crumbles part way, to the very end, when she is forced to contemplate giving up magic, only to find herself encased in ice and unable to do so, instead forced to watch students, the same girls she had done everything she possibly could to protect, begin to give up their magic instead.

Pippa’s visit, the potions (she wishes they had not been brewed properly, wishes she could forget the experience of both of them, wishes she could forget the loss of control she had been subjected to), the antics of Mildred Hubble, Marigold Mould, all of it was a crushing weight that she refused to let go of, refused to stop thinking about. She could have done better, she could have done more, she could have-

Deep inside, buried beneath layer upon layer of walls and chains and fetters, guarded by rules and regulations and codes and promises, she knows there was nothing she could do beyond what she had.

That only makes it sting worse.

Julie Hubble teaching at Cackles, an ordinary woman without a speck of magic, does not bring out the best in her. But if her cruelty causes her to leave, then Hecate does not care what anyone else might say or think about her. Mildred, with her desire to help and her disregard for the rules, her lack of restraints, combined with an ordinary who she cares deeply about within close grasp, is a combination which Hecate does not want to face. Her attempts are for naught, her taunts serving only to bolster the incredibly bold woman.

_The rules are there for your protection._

She didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or to cry, when Mildred managed to save her mother so easily. It all seemed to come easily to the girl who acted without thought of rules or restraints or the witch’s code. And then she was faced with Indigo Moon once again, the girl she had destroyed with a childhood mistake, one which had bolstered her to seal herself away from the world, caused her to chain and fetter herself with every letter of every law in an attempt to quell the danger she represented.

What was the point? What was the point of any of it? Of stopping her quest to free Indigo, because Indigo could be dangerous, of cutting herself away from the world, of building up walls so high that not even she could reach the top, walls that even she hadn’t the faintest idea how to tear down if she so desired? What was the point of chaining herself away with so many fetters that she hadn’t the slightest idea how to be free, even if she wanted to try? 

She breaks down in her room when she realizes that there never was a point. Realizes that everything she has built up is completely and utterly pointless.

But she has forgotten how to express herself through anything except rage, has forgotten how to allow herself to feel, how to be a human and not a machine wearing a skin that mindlessly obeys the law. And so her breakdown does not last long at all, and she is left with an impossible situation to face. First she tries to drive Indigo Moon away, so she does not have to face the pain of it all, and then she, finally, allows Ada to do what she had wanted to do from the day she found out and release her from the grounds.

Her heart is encased in iron, squeezed tight in her steely grasp and forced to beat to the rhythm she wants it to, in a desperate attempt to exercise control over it. But still it remains traitorous, refuses to follow the rules she’s set. 

_The rules are there for your protection._

She no longer knows how to be free, has long since lost the awareness of what it is like to exist as someone unchained and unrestrained. She does not remember what it is like to simply allow herself to feel, does not know how to breathe freely. She has built her walls so high that not even she can reach the top and start removing bricks. 

But the time has long since passed for her to try.  
_Remember that sometimes you don’t need protection._


End file.
